2/25/2013

The WaPo ombudsman publishes an exchange between a reporter and a reader about the paper’s coverage of gay marriage. The report is interesting for the reporter’s unapologetic rooting for a pro-gay stance, and lecturing the reader about what conservatives “ought” to believe — all while asking the ombudsman that he remain anonymous.

The reader writes in to make this complaint:

The overlooked “other side” on the gay issue is quite legitimate, and includes the Pope, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, evangelist Billy Graham, scholars such as Robert George of Princeton, and the millions of Americans who believe in traditional marriage and oppose redefining marriage into nothingness. . . . Is there no room in The Post for those who support the male-female, procreative model of marriage?

The reporter responds:

The reason that legitimate media outlets routinely cover gays is because it is the civil rights issue of our time. Journalism, at its core, is about justice and fairness, and that’s the “view of the world” that we espouse; therefore, journalists are going to cover the segment of society that is still not treated equally under the law.

The reader responds:

Contrary to what you say, the mission of journalism is not justice. Defining justice is a political matter, not journalistic. Journalism should be about accuracy and fairness.

Good journalism also means not demeaning conservatives as “haters.”

The reporter does not seem to agree:

As for accuracy, should the media make room for racists, i.e. those people who believe that black people shouldn’t marry white people? Any story on African-Americans wouldn’t be wholly accurate without the opinion of a racist, right?

Of course I have a bias. I have a bias toward fairness. The true conservative would have the same bias. The true conservative would want the government out of people’s bedrooms, and religion out of government.

Oh, thanks for telling us what the true conservative would want — because you so deeply understand the true conservative!

The ombudsman then gives a totally unsatisfying peroration, in which he says the paper needs to understand conservatives better — then proceeds to reinforce what the reporter says: it’s all about fairness, and reporters care so very much about fairness; why it’s in their blood! — while showing zero understanding of the conservative view that he claims reporters need to understand better.

What is most interesting about the whole thing, to me, is that the reporter wishes to remain anonymous in the column. I can understand why the reader doesn’t want to have his views revealed in the pages of the Post. He just got compared to a racist. He’s the “bad guy.” Why let the paper slam his name?

But the reporter was being refreshingly if arrogantly honest, presumably under his own name, in the emails. Yet his pride in his position doesn’t extend to publicly revealing his name. Now why would that be, do you think?

I, for one, am curious as to the identity of the reporter — and if the reader stumbles across my post and wants to send me the reporter’s name, I will happily protect the reader’s name while publishing the reporter’s. Email me at patterico AT gmail DOT com.

Just don’t be surprised if the paper or reporter publishes your name in retaliation. There’s fairness and there’s getting even, and which do you think the paper will see as the higher goal in this situation?

307 Responses to “WaPo Reporter to Reader: Those Who Oppose Gay Marriage Are Like Racists and Oppose Fairness”

Why bother trying to learn the name of this particular reporter? Everybody who writes for the Post thinks the same way, viewing conservatives as evil is the litmus test all would-be reporters must pass.

Even if you never get the reporter’s name — and I support your quest for it — this incident is yet another solid data point to support the view that the mainstream media is incorrigibly biased by political bias and prone to sanctimonious twaddle. Without a name, this reporter stands for “Every MSM Reporter,” sort of like if there were a shameful version of the Unknown Soldier.

Sigh. Here we go again with Mr. Feet. People who oppose gay marriage are not homophobes. People who make that claim are pushing an agenda, and it has little to do with fairness, but instead with advocacy.

To be sure, some opponents of gay marriage are homophobes…but I could make a similar sneer at some of the quite extreme folks in favor of gay marriage.

Look at the reporter in the article. He or she is quite sure that she or he is fair. I wonder how that reporter feels about Harry Reid’s smears of Mitt Romney? Or about Gitmo still being open? Or the truth about who pushed for the sequester.

Again, it’s not about fairness. It never has been. It’s about advocacy.

Do you have to be opposed to gay marriage to see how nonsensical this formulation is?

Of course I have a bias. I have a bias toward fairness. The true conservative would have the same bias. The true conservative would want the government out of people’s bedrooms, and religion out of government.

That people seeking public affirmation of their relationship is a matter of privacy?

The fact is that the public overwhelmingly agrees with the reporter. The difference between single sex couples and diverse couples is now looked at it as equivalent to the difference between black people and white people. What’s new is that this difference is now beyond discussion, it is assumed to be a matter of justice.

This isn’t about politics. It isn’t about the media. It’s about an entire nation that has been brought up to react emotionally, and to only listen to those who agree.

It’s about justice that has been debased to a deaf, reactionary, thoughtless feeling. If that is the new justice, the same justice that would punish Californians for underfunding prisons by deliberately releasing violent criminals, then none of us are safe.

The difference between single sex couples and diverse couples is now looked at it as equivalent to the difference between black people and white people.

Why limit it to just couples? And why limit it to people? What if my idea of marriage involves a donkey, a boa constrictor, and a trapeze? With Bob Menendez every once in a while sending over the occasional under-aged Third World escort?

Why can’t I get that three ring circus catered despite the caterers evangelical beliefs?

The true conservative would have the same bias. The true conservative would want the government out of people’s bedrooms, and government out of religion.

FTFY!

I think John Adams would have thought there was a place for religion in government….that Moral People’s thing.
The worst tragedies perpetrated by government have been done by governments that have cast religion out of the public square. If nothing else, the 20th-Century has taught us (or should have) that.

If I may paraphrase Gloria Steinam, a man’s rectum needs another man’s penis in it like a fish needs a bicycle.

It’s the homosex, stupid. Keep ignoring it and be nice polite guys and I’m sure someday what’s left of our Republic will, as if by wizardry, straighten itself out. Just look at all the successes we’ve had so far.

I am not sure which part cracks me up the most – the desire for anonymity, claim that journolistism is pursuit of justice as opposed to truth, or his desire to claim what he thinks true conservatives should think.

indeed, if all of us meany meany homophobe lifeywhatevers would just gather on some island, stand on one side to make it tip over, the United States would be a much nicer nicer place

of course, if we didn’t all stand on one side of the island and it stayed afloat, some enlightened person would have to come to the island to get standing to file a lawsuit to legally declare that all of the meany meany homophobe lifeywhatevers are not thinking correctly and need to stop

I just hope that all of the folks who think I worry too much are willing to face the facts 10 years after SSM is made the legally enlightened version of marriage for the nation

But you know, don’t you, that Oliver Stone and some other guy are going around to colleges and clearing up the history of the 20th Century and letting everyone know that Stalin was really really a nice guy and Truman was an imperialist

I’m almost certain from what I have observed over the years that with or without gay marriage there’s still going to be “homosex” with openly gay couples vacationing, having commitment ceremonies, living together, renting places and buying houses together- not to mention adopting children.

Or did you just want an excuse to post that Gloria Steinem “quote” paraphrase. Did you come up with that one all by yourself? What do you mean by “keep ignoring it”? You’re not a fan of the punishments Islamicists mete out for suspected homosexual acts, are you?

“of course, if we didn’t all stand on one side of the island and it stayed afloat, some enlightened person would have to come to the island to get standing to file a lawsuit to legally declare that all of the meany meany homophobe lifeywhatevers are not thinking correctly and need to stop”=Libertarianism!

Which is apparently the governmental philosophy that everyone gets to do whatever the hell they want and if you don’t like it the full force of the government will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

The Libertarians. That government is best that governs least. When you stop squirming.

Captain: You’re gonna get used to wearin’ them chains after a while, Luke, but you never stop listenin’ to them clinkin’. ‘Cause they’re gonna remind you of what I’ve been sayin’ – for your own good.
Luke: Wish you’d stop bein’ so good to me, Cap’n.

I think it’s only fair to point out that this being the WaPo, if that mystery reporter had deigned to wade in and get some quotes from the other (Conservative) side, he/she probably would have chosen a quote by someone like our 11B40 above–rather than from articulate spokesmen on the issue like the conservative reader or our MDinPhilly.

The reporter: ‘Journalism, at its core, is about justice and fairness, and that’s the “view of the world” that we espouse’

— Silly me. I always thought that JOURNALISTS were supposed to view what’s going on in the world and report what they see, rather than espousing a particular (hmm, ‘particular’ … ‘partisan’) view of it.

The overlooked “other side” on the gay issue is quite legitimate, and includes the Pope, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, evangelist Billy Graham, scholars such as Robert George of Princeton, and the millions of Americans who believe in traditional marriage and oppose redefining marriage into nothingness. . . . Is there no room in The Post for those who support the male-female, procreative model of marriage?

Here is the other side of the issue.

The relationship of “husband and wife” is “founded in nature, but modified by civil society: the one directing man to continue
and multiply his species, the other in which that natural impulse must be confined and regulated.”

1 William Blackstone, Commentaries *410.

“the establishment of marriage in all civilized states is built on this natural obligation of the father to provide for his children”

id. at *35.

Marriage is “is made by a voluntary compact between man and woman.”

John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government § 78 (1690)

For the end of conjunction, between male and female, being not barely procreation, but the continuation of the species; this conjunction betwixt male and female ought to last, even after procreation, so long as is necessary to the nourishment and support of the young ones, who are to be sustained even after procreation, so long as is necessary to the nourishment and support of the young ones, who are to be sustained by those that got them, till they are able to shift and provide for themselves.

id. at § 79

Marriage “was instituted … for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity, and for securing the maintenance and education of children”

Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language
(1st ed. ) (1828)

“Marriage between two persons of one sex could have no validity, as none of the ends of matrimony could be accomplished thereby. It has always, therefore, been deemed requisite to the entire validity of every marriage . . . that the parties should be of different sex.”

Marriage is a “ contract, made in due form of law, by which a man and woman reciprocally engage to live with each other during their joint lives, and to discharge towards each other the duties imposed by law on the relation of husband and wife.”

John Bouvier, A Law
Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United
States
105 (1868)

“For certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to take rank as one of the coordinate states of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement. ”

The true conservative would have the same bias. The true conservative would want the government out of people’s bedrooms, and religion out of government.

Since when is William and Rick being able to force Heather to photograph their reception about bedrooms?

Let’s be real here: the push for same-sex marriage is not, and never has been, about sex, nor was it ever about hospital visitation rights and the like; if it had been, the various civil unions/domestic partnerships laws would have been sufficient. Rather, it is about a demand for respect, and for a societal and governmental recognition that homosexual relationships be considered to be just as good and just as normal as heterosexual ones.

And this is taking the same path as the civil rights actions of the 1960s and 1970s. Private businesses were defined as public accommodations to get restaurant owners used to serving black customers, to the point at which it became a normal way of doing business. Once Heather photographs enough Williams-and-Rick marriages, such marriages cease to become oddities, but become part of the range of being normal.

And it won’t be long before the force of law is used against the churches. In the 1950s a church which refused to marry an interracial couple would have no problems; if one did that today, the lawsuit would be filed immediately. ‘Twon’t be long before such happens to a church.

gotcha. And I’m just saying that people what perceive gay marriage as just, and the lack of gay marriage as unjust, they don’t really have a lot of honest-to-goodness flexibility on the whole bigotry thing.

And I think it’s silly to pretend that they have some obligation to look at what they perceive as a wrongness in the world as something what is actually an agree to disagree thing. Regardless of what side you are on this is not an agree to disagree thing, it’s an I’m right you’re wrong thing.

Also you can be a true conservative and still support gay marriage. This whole gay marriage thing is just your average cultural paradigm shift and it makes a crappy political litmus test I think.

This is the way they want to play. Truth is not fair. But we want fairness and legitimacy regardless of the truth. I agree that if you are going to demand certain rights, put your name out there. My name is Fred Rochester and I approve this message of righteousness according to the Bible.

And I think it’s silly to pretend that they have some obligation to look at what they perceive as a wrongness in the world as something what is actually an agree to disagree thing. Regardless of what side you are on this is not an agree to disagree thing, it’s an I’m right you’re wrong thing.

Biology is discrimination!

Also you can be a true conservative and still support gay marriage. This whole gay marriage thing is just your average cultural paradigm shift and it makes a crappy political litmus test I think.

Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/25/2013 @ 5:16 pm

Yeah, I feel the same way about wealth redistribution and a centrally directed economy. Just cuz I’m for it doesn’t mean I’m not down with conservatizm.

Also, I’m just as Catholic as the next guy but I think Vladimir Putin would make a great Pope.

42, Steve57 – I don’t think Nancy Pelosi would make a great Pope either.

Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/25/2013 @ 5:32 pm

I disagree. She’d make Catholics get over that “conscience thing” that comes with not taking religion as a joke. You know, like she does.

Religion is a great thing according to the Democrats, as long as everyone recognizes it’s only taken seriously to the point where you get your minority constituency into one gathering point so as you can lecture them on how the Rethuglicans are going to stop the government from buying them ****.

After the lecture, if they want to burn incense or chant or do some other nonsense that’s their business. But it need not be taken seriously.

Regardless of what side you are on this is not an agree to disagree thing, it’s an I’m right you’re wrong thing.
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/25/2013 @ 5:16 pm

mr feets- thank you for the clarification
and I agree with you
that/this is the problem
many people from the sideline, I think including our kind host, think we can all get along by letting everyone have what they want
but you can’t have hot chocolate and chocolate ice cream in the same cup at the same time
us lifeydoodles are not being given the choice to say, “You want mr and mr jones? Fine, just don’t ask me to say i think it’s a great idea, because i don’t”

no, us lifeydoodles have to agree that mr and mr is the same as mr and mrs or we are called evil haters

what people do and what color of skin they have are not apples and apples, whether you prefer oranges or not
the marriage of one man and one woman with different amounts of melanin is different from the marriage of two men, no matter how much or little melanin they have

marriage between one man and one woman is fine no matter what amount of melanin they have, the difference is “only skin deep”
if you want to change marriage to something else, on what basis do you change it?
is there some logic that says 2 and 2 alone is ok no matter what the sexes
if 2 is ok why not 3? if you say, “Well, i don’t think so” on what rational basis other than today you think so and tomorrow you think something else?

the marriage of one man and one woman with different amounts of melanin is different from the marriage of two men

me I wouldn’t treat them any differently

i have no reason or rationale for to justify treating them differently

if they were my neighbors and a drunken gypsy drove his careening gypsy wagon into their kitchen the next day I would go over and say hi you guys man that sucks about your kitchen would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow night I’ve got fajita meat marinating and if they said no thank you we’re gay homosexuals or if they said no thank you we’re just gonna stay home and miscegenate I’d say no worries I can just drop some by okey dokey then but you call if you need anything at all

and then I would take my leave and go back home and thaw some fajita meat really fast in the sink cause of the part where I said I already had it marinating was a lie

i have no problem making fajitas for 2 men in a gay relationship
I would say, hey, do you want lizano costa rican salsa or tex mex or what
and i wouldn’t even raise the issue
but if they ask me do i think our relationship is equivalent to a husband and wife i would say no i don’t
then they can choose to eat the fajitas or tell me i’m a hater and leave
but i would give them the respect of being honest

what i like is people being truthful and not manipulative
if people want to advocate for same sex marriage and say either you think ssm is the same as hetero or you are are evil, let them say it
what i don’t like is when people say “let people be free to live as they want’ when they don’t mean it,
because they don’t want to let me think like I want without calling me a hater

maybe someone out there knows data concerning this-
how many homosexuals, male and female, think a committed relationship between them is “just the same” as marriage as opposed to “they have the right” just like heteros do?

I am sure there are gays and lesbians each who say, “Of course 2 of us in a relationship is not the same as two heteros, but we want the same legal treatment”. I don’t know if it is <1% or a considerable number- of all, not just the ones shouting.

I don’t mind holding the door open for you, Lesbian person on the street behind me-I hold the door open for everyone-I don’t expect a Thanks-but my quota of scrunched up pissed off faces sighing is full today Thank you very much

Meanwhile if your 12 year old daughter refuses to use the stall next to the future state of Massachusetts nominee for best candidate for future Jeff Dahmer she’s bullying him. Everyone knows that homosexual cannibals are statistically more likely to be unliked in prison.

Fish wishlist do’s & don’ts
Don’t talk down to fishes
Do ask for 3 wishes
Don’t do number 2 off boat
Do clean the wax out of your ears before swimming
Don’t harbor grudges
Remember-Pools are for peeing-lakes are not [ there might be a Lady with a sword innit}
Do buy a fishing vest-pockets!
Don’t tie a fishing line to ur genitals as a joke
Don’t go fishing with Fredo

Homophobia has never been listed as part of a clinical taxonomy of phobias, neither in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD); homophobia is usually used in a non-clinical sense.

However, Wikipedia’s editors do not let this stop them, treating this as an actual phobia (fear without reason). Compare with Wikipedia on Hoplophobia, the fear of weapons, or guns.

“Hoplophobia”

Hoplophobia is not a true phobia, and it is not recognized as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. The meaning and usage ascribed by Cooper falls outside of the medical definitions of true phobias. For example, phobias require that the person be aware and acknowledge that their fear is irrational, and usually causes some kind of functional impairment.

Sigh. Here we go again with Mr. Feet. People who oppose gay marriage are not homophobes.

Mr. Feets should know, since he often uses the word “gay” in a negative way. But that’s okay. In terms of socio-cultural matters, he’s merely a “limousine liberal.”

BTW, society and government, if anything, need to become more open-minded, accommodating, beautiful, loving, tolerant, beautiful, loving, heartfelt, and loving. And did I say accommodating and tolerant? And loving?

thedailybeast.com, Feb 22, 2013:

When record mogul Clive Davis came out as bisexual this week, he might have shocked those who didn’t work in the music industry, where his personal life was an open secret. But what was really surprising in this age of coming-out stories is that Davis came out as a bisexual—and not as a gay man.

Though the twice-married Davis has been in two monogamous relationships with men since 1990, he insisted, as he made the talk-show circuit in support of his new autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life, that was he bi, not gay.

“For over 50 years, I had never had sex with a man. I wasn’t repressed; I had very good sexual relations with women. For me, this very maligned, misunderstood subject of bisexuality came up,” he told Meredith Vieira on Nightline. “I’m not lying—it exists.”

As same-sex marriage and other gay civil-rights matters become so commonplace they are almost passé, and as transgender issues have also increasingly taken center stage, bisexuality remains the most overlooked and misunderstood letter in the LGBT acronym. But despite the challenges that remain, bi advocates say they hope celebrities like Davis will help erase the stigmas that surround them.

Some bisexual advocates say they are just there—but choose to stay quiet due to the bi-phobia that runs rampant in the gay community. Many bisexuals choose not to admit that they are bi to other gays and lesbians.

“When people come out as gay, nobody says, ‘No you’re not, you must be bi or you must be something else,’” said Ellyn Ruthstrom, president and administrative director of the Bisexual Resource Center, the oldest national bi organization in the country. “Bisexuals have a really hard time. When we come out, so often somebody else is trying to say, ‘Oh no, you can’t be bi.’ Unfortunately it’s a common reaction when people come out as bi. And I think that’s what prevents some people from coming out as bi, because the reaction is often disbelief rather than supportiveness and acceptance. People should be allowed to define themselves the way they want to.”

It is ironic, then, that bisexuals have the least amount of visibility under the LGBT umbrella when they actually comprise a slight majority in that community, according to a study the Williams Institute conducted in 2011.

While female celebrities like Anna Paquin, Ke$ha, and Evan Rachel Wood have come out as bisexual in recent years, the out-male bisexual, in particular, is a unicorn. There was even a recent study designed to prove, that yes, they really exist.

Perhaps not. “Feminists” like Amanda Marcotte, who support homosexual marriage, still blanch at the legalization of polygamy, because they think it tends to demean women. The vast majority of three-or-more relationships involve one male and multiple females, and many of our feminist friends find that somehow degrades or subjugates women.

But the arguments for legalizing polygamous marriages are virtually indistinguishable from those arguing for two-person homosexual marriages. If the state can legitimately prefer that marriages be limited to only two people, then the state can also legitimately prefer to set restrictions on the relationships it is willing to recognize as a legal marriage, and that includes the preference that marriages be limited to heterosexual couples.

Mark – it’s apparently a common complaint among bisexuals that both straight people and gay people don’t believe them when they say they are bisexual.

To be fair, a good amount of the blame for this lies on gay people, because when you’re first coming out, and you’re afraid of rejection, it’s very easy to lie and say you’re bi, because being bi somehow seems less likely to earn you rejection than being gay is … so a lot of less courageous gay people go the route of pretending to be bi, which of course reinforces the notion that bi people don’t exist.

I mostly haven’t noticed this problem, but because I’m not bi I would be less likely to notice it.

Dana – I think the easy distinction around polygamy is that the default rules for marital property (how it’s taxed, distribution on dissolution, distribution on death) rapidly become unworkable in a multiple-person marriage.

Perhaps not. “Feminists” like Amanda Marcotte, who support homosexual marriage, still blanch at the legalization of polygamy, because they think it tends to demean women. The vast majority of three-or-more relationships involve one male and multiple females, and many of our feminist friends find that somehow degrades or subjugates women.

Why would it demean women more than men?

Dana – I think the easy distinction around polygamy is that the default rules for marital property (how it’s taxed, distribution on dissolution, distribution on death) rapidly become unworkable in a multiple-person marriage.

There are justifications for treating such relationships differently.

But marriage is about a “special status”, not just a “bundle of rights”. See Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health, 289 Conn. 315 at
289, 957 A.2d 407 at 416 (Conn. Sup. Ct. 2008), cited in Complaint in Jackson v. Abercrombie, CV11-009734-ACK-KSC (D. Haw.), at 13 Even if “the bundle of rights” has to be different, what justifies the denial of the “special status”?

As always, thank you for contributing to the discussion (serious, not snark).

I do find your comment interesting, as since a lot of the discussion is based on the idea of many that homosexuality is an innate “hard wired” behavior, that it would be “more consistent” to say that one was gay (“I’m this way and that’s just the way it is”) rather than bi (“Yes, I can choose which way I want to go).

I think I can understand why bi’s feel the most isolated if they do. Human relationships are based on some degree of predictability, or trust. In our more reflective moments we realize no one is perfect and we will often be disappointed, but it is comforting to think we know generally what to expect from someone. Being in a relationship with a bi, whether platonic or romantic, has a greater degree of uncertainty for the future, I would think. Uncertainty can mean fear, fear can mean avoidance.

Of course, we humans (GLBT and straight) are often ruled by what we think will keep us safe at the moment, rather than trying to be intellectually consistent in the long term.

BTW, what is this about Mass. public schools saying one needs to “affirm a person’s transexual identity” or face punishment? Does this mean girls need to accept a person with XY genotype and phenotype in their bathroom and locker room if the person likes to wear make-up, dresses, and identifies as a XX?
I’m 100% in agreement that a person who is bi, gay, or trans should not be harrassed in any way, zero tolerance. Unfortunately, not everyone can be “treated fairly” (fairly = the same) because (as Snape says) “Life (often) isn’t fair”.

Trying to treat everyone “fair” = “the same” leads to logical (logical = consistent with reality) inconsistencies. One “can” treat everyone with respect and love without logical inconsistency, but it is much harder (impossible, in fact, apart from the grace and empowerment of God).

I believe I have no more reason to believe people when they say they would never support polygamy than I had reason to believe that President Obama was against homosexual marriage in 2008.

I believe I saw something about a situation where 3 people were legally given parental rights to a child (I think a lesbian couple and maybe the sperm donor?).
If you can divide child custody in 3 ways I would think you can divide property in 3 ways.

Of course, maybe Solomon would have a different take on the situation.

But the arguments for legalizing polygamous marriages are virtually indistinguishable

Moreover, with Sharia Law waiting in the wings, and the concept of a male having multiple wives actually being far more common throughout history than same-sex marriage — and, if anything, polygamy being deemed traditional in some cultures (and hewing closer to genetic idiosyncrasies) — if it’s good for the (gay) goose, it sure as hell is good for the gander.

To be fair, a good amount of the blame for this lies on gay people,

But you have to admit that a high percentage of those in the GLBT crowd are of the left, and so how do the socio-political biases of “do-your-own-thang” and “conformity is boring” — and a happy rejection of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” — factor into the way such people deal with issues in general, sexuality in particular?

My hunch is someone like this (who labels himself as gay) is the rule, not the exception.

[Famed British actor] Rupert Everett, whose autobiography will be released next month, admitted to an `on-off affair’ with Bob Geldof’s late wife Paula Yates. The gay British actor Everett, 47, said he had a sexual relationship with Yates while he was married to Geldof.

“That side of our relationship was tenuous to say the least, and our lives (eventually) went in different directions.”

He has also admitted to sexual encounters with actresses Susan Sarandon and Beatrice Dalle: “I am mystified by my heterosexual affairs – but then I am mystified by most of my relationships.

I think the easy distinction around polygamy is that the default rules for marital property (how it’s taxed, distribution on dissolution, distribution on death) rapidly become unworkable in a multiple-person marriage.

We have all sorts of multiple person arrangements in which the dissolution of the business, corporation, partnership, etc., requires legal adjudication of the arrangement’s property; we should be able to figure out how to divide property when a polygamous marriage dissolves.

Of course, I prefer the traditional solution in places which have polygamy: all the property belongs to the male.

I didn’t claim that it would; I stated that people like Amanda Marcotte hold that it does. Since she and her fellow travelers are also among the supporters of same-sex marriage, when you subtract them from the equation, the support for recognizing polygamy drops.

This is another reason why I’ve become increasingly cynical and skeptical about the GLBT crowd (and agenda), certainly with its preference for socio-political leftism being as important to it — if not more important than — as the so-called preferences of human sexuality itself.

shine.yahoo.com, October 2011:

A new study reveals that women’s sexual preferences tend to be a gray area (yep, identity confusion wasn’t just for those college dorm days). In fact, researchers at Boise State University found that in a group of heterosexual women, 60 percent were physically interested in other women, 45 percent made out with a woman in the past, and 50 percent had fantasies about the same sex.

Experts support this view. “Women are encouraged to be emotionally close to each other,” says psychology professor Elizabeth Morgan. “That provides an opportunity for intimacy and romantic feelings to develop.” From talking about personal issues for hours to calling each other “lovers” (well, maybe that’s just women in my generation), women’s friendships are often barely distinguishable from romantic relationships.

When heterosexual women hook up with other women, their relationships is based on an emotional connection. Lisa Diamond from the University of Utah believes that it only takes the right person for convince a woman to enter into a relationship with someone of the same sex.

Does that make them bisexual? Not exactly.

“You can still be heterosexual and have interests, experiences or fantasies with the same sex,” says Morgan.

In addition, sexuality gets more, not less, fluid with time – yet more proof that experimentation isn’t just for college. In a study conducted by Diamond, the older a woman was, the more likely she was to describe her sexual preference as “unlabeled”. “We have this idea that sexuality gets clearer and more defined as time goes on,” says Diamond. “We consider that a sign of maturity to figure out who you are. I’ve seen it’s really the opposite.”

To be fair, a good amount of the blame for this lies on gay people, (Aphrael)

But you have to admit that a high percentage of those in the GLBT crowd are of the left, and so how do the socio-political biases of “do-your-own-thang” and “conformity is boring” — and a happy rejection of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” — factor into the way such people deal with issues in general, sexuality in particular?

Are you suggesting that being politically leftist leads to a greater chance of being homosexual, or that being homosexual leads to a greater probability of being liberal?

A potentially interesting subject for scholarly research would be whether our two-party system produces a greater number of people who conform completely to the “standard” views of their own party, and leads to a dearth of people who hold positions which would be considered as moving between the standard beliefs of the two parties. In nations with multiple parties, there are more options for people across the spectrum.

An example would be the pro-life Democrat. A few of them claim to be pro-life, such as Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), but his views are apparently platitudes only: he votes reliably pro-abortion, and if he did not, would lose his party’s nomination.

Mark: I have a fair amount of experience with self-described gay people; my experience says that *none* of them are sexually attracted to women and that while they have female friends, having sex with them is universally unappealing.

The plural of anecdote isn’t data, but absent a study on the issue, I think anecdote trumps speculation.

I believe that sexuality is hardwired. I think most people are hardwired heterosexuals, a small minority are hardwired homosexuals, and some percentage whose relative size i’m unable to assess are hardwired to be bisexual.

My point was that it’s very common for young hardwired gay people to *claim* to be bisexual because they think this is less likely to disappoint their parents or others who might judge them for their sexuality, and that this encourages a belief *among gay people* that the average self-professed bisexual is actually a gay person pretending.

I think your point about relationships with bisexuals being more uncertain is a good one.

—–

I’m not familiar with the story about Mass public schools, or what the rules actually are or how they’ll be implemented.

SPQR, I think there’s a very good argument that the way the Mormon church was pressured into abandoning polygamy was a violation of the 1st amendment, and I certainly think it’s one of the more unfortunate episodes in late 19th century American history.

true, aphrael, but somewhere along the way the plural of anecdote does become data if looked at honestly and critically

your comment is why I think being bi is potentially more alienating, my observation is it is easy for women to have friendly relationships with gays as there are some assumptions that make the relationships “safe” in a way, whereas a relationship with a bi would have an additional ambiguity
of course, overcoming ambiguity makes a relationship more firm and important, if the ambiguity doesn’t cause difficulty and distance
at least from the point of view of a hetero guy it is not easy to have significant relationships with a hetero woman without having to deal with potential romantic undercurrents or overtones

My point was that it’s very common for young hardwired gay people to *claim* to be bisexual because they think this is less likely to disappoint their parents or others who might judge them for their sexuality,
and that this encourages a belief *among gay people* that the average self-professed bisexual is actually a gay person pretending.
Comment by aphrael (f46ee5) — 2/26/2013 @ 8:38 am

I think we are in agreement from the perspective that we can see how a homosexual could think being bi is easier for heteros to accept and hence an easier way to come out,
but I’m not sure it is easier for most heteros to accept bi anymore than homosexuality, and intellectually it seems to give basis for an argument in favor of people being able to choose their sexuality, and hence a “strategic error” long term
but again, we often do things because of the tension of the moment, not long term thought out strategies

FWIW, my opinion is sexual preference is sort of “firmwired”, not a conscious choice than can be easily chosen against, but also not hardwired as one of equivalent options gay or straight

I completely agree that it’s not easier for straight people to accept bisexuality than homosexuality — but I can understand why it’s not clear to someone who is still fumbling around trying to figure sexuality out.

Some more anecdotal evidence for your women-and-gays vs. women-and-bis theory: I have a number of female friends who are *very* flirty with me, and i’ll flirt back, because it’s fun to flirt … and because we know there’s *nothing* to it, that there can never be anything to it. And in an odd way this makes those friendships easier than my friendships with straight male friends, because – at least when the friendship is developing and still uncertain – with straight men, i’m always worried about making them uncomfortable and scaring them off of the friendship, and that’s just not an issue with women at all.

Which means I can imagine the same discomfort concern in the initial phases of a woman + bisexual man friendship. And of course this isn’t an absolute bar, any more than my issue is an absolute bar to close friendships with straight men … it’s just an added obstacle to be overcome.

Mark, at 125: there also seems to be some evidence that female sexuality and male sexuality work differently, and I suspect that the increasing-flexibility-with-age is more prevalent among women than among men.

The gay rights movement has largely (albeit not exclusively) been driven by gay men and reflects a more gay-male perspective than a lesbian perspective, so it’s not entirely surprising that – to the extent that gay male sexuality and lesbian sexuality work differently – the dominant view expressed by the gay rights movement aligns more with gay male sexuality.

I have a fair amount of experience with self-described gay people; my experience says that *none* of them are sexually attracted to women and that while they have female friends, having sex with them is universally unappealing.

and

I believe that sexuality is hardwired. I think most people are hardwired heterosexuals, a small minority are hardwired homosexuals, and some percentage whose relative size i’m unable to assess are hardwired to be bisexual.

These statements necessarily equate different forms of sexuality with sexual intercourse, but it seems to me that the real concern is different: it assumes that a heterosexual person can only enjoy sex with the person with whom he forms an emotional or “couples” relationship, and excludes the possibility that a person could be either heterosexual or homosexual in his romantic relationships but still enjoy sex for recreational purposes alone with someone from the opposite sex of his romantic partner.

Kinsey made the same mistake: in a population study based on prisoners, who had no opportunity for heterosexual intercourse, he defined as homosexuals prisoners who sought sexual release with the only people available: other people of the same sex. Any port in a storm hardly seems to be the proper way to define these things.

I, at least, would define someone who forms relationships with members of the opposite sex as heterosexual, without that definition being impaired by occasional forays into homosexual activity, just for fun’s sake. The culturally-enforced “ick” factor limited that greatly in the past, but as the cultural “ick” message deteriorates, more such forays ought to be expected, without a definition of bisexuality applying.

> it assumes that a heterosexual person can only enjoy sex with the person with whom he forms an emotional or “couples” relationship

I think that would be a silly assumption, given how common marital infidelity is.

I think you have a fair point that there *can be* a distinction between “what genders am i sexually attracted to” and “what genders am i emotionally attracted to in a way that would cause me to form long-term coupled relationships?”.

Some of the saddest posts i see in gay fora are actually from people who are *sexually* attracted exclusively to men but *emotionally* attracted exclusively to women. That’s a hard, hard place to be, and I don’t envy them.

[All of this does presume that all sexual activity is a result of sexual attraction; any data derived from prisons or other any-port-in-a-storm conditions are, I think, per se problamtci.]

> I, at least, would define someone who forms relationships with members of the opposite sex as heterosexual, without that definition being impaired by occasional forays into homosexual activity, just for fun’s sake

I would define such a person as bisexual, assuming they feel any sexual attraction to the people they form relationships with. They experience sexual attraction to both genders, but they have an exclusive emotional attraction to one gender.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep coming up with the new adjectives every post?

Aphrael wrote:

Anecdotally, I can say that i’ve *never* been sexually attracted to a woman, and that the notion of sex with a woman triggers a small-scale ‘ick’ reaction.

This implies that the “ick” factor is biological rather than cultural; there is no cultural reason for you to have an “ick” reaction to heterosexual intercourse. Zero attraction is very understandable; an “ick” reaction less so.

I think it’s great that aphrael comes to this blog so openly and honestly as a grounded happy gay man not to mention a left leaning person, and shows such grace in an often embarrassingly hostile to gays crowd. I appreciate his calm and usually reasoned approach as he tries to reach out to people who he’d like to better understand his life and try to give them something to think about. But it’s a damn shame none of the conservative GOProud members or Log Cabin Republicans self identify and come to participate in the discussions here. I think that insight from people not currently or traditionally “of the left” (That’s for you Mark, dear) would greatly enhance our understanding of what it means to be both gay and conservative and why it is not the dichotomy some think it has to be or seem to want it to be.

Dana, hopefully you don’t have a global uniqueness requirement where you can never reuse an adjective.

I wouldn’t argue with the notion that there’s a biological ick factor involved – there may or may not be, it’s inconclusive. Like I said, it’s small-scale for me, and it’s something that doesn’t take a great deal of work to overcome, but it’s there.

As more anecdotal evidence: it’s clear to me that both my oldest, longest-term friend *and* one of my closest friends in the city are both squicked out by mental images of gay sex in a way that they aren’t by mental images about straight sex. They’re able to overcome it, and it doesn’t diminish their love for me or my love for them, or weaken or imperil our friendship, but it’s clearly there.

And yet I have other friends who are clearly not squicked out at all. So: is it biological? Or does it fall within the range of normal psychological variability? or both?

(a) thank you. I try to be calm and reasoned, but I’m human, so sometimes I fail, and I’m grateful that those failings aren’t particularly held against me.

(b) I think it bears saying that while there are certainly some people in the crowd here who are hostile, there are also a number of honest men and women who approach me with good will; otherwise I would have left long ago.

(c) Among gay people of my age and general orientation, there’s a theory that the *single most important thing* you can do for gay rights is to be openly and forthrightly and politely gay – to be out in a way which shows everyone that you can be gay and otherwise perfectly normal. I think this notion may be increasingly dated, as it comes from a time when homosexuality was sufficiently rare that many people didn’t know they knew any gay people … but I think there’s an element of truth to it, even still.

(d) I’ve found this interchange particularly good – MD in Philly and I were, for a while, describing essentially the same phenomenon (in terms of personal relationships and how sexuality effects the development of friendship) from opposite sides of the fence. It’s that kind of conversation, I think, that builds community – and for all that I like engaging with people intellectually, it’s the community that’s really the important thing to me.

I don’t think I’ve ever met a gay conservative…but then again about all of the gays I’ve met are from Philadelphia, where it’s hard to meet a straight conservative as well!!

Well, MD, if you did meet me, there’s no particular reason for me to say, “Hi, MD, I’m Dana and I’m heterosexual.” For conservatives, there’s more of a cultural reason to debate politics of other things than to simply come out — pun intended — about sexuality if sexuality isn’t the topic.

People who know me know that I’m heterosexual, because eventually they’ll meet my wife or we’ll start talking about families or whatever.

As a conservative, I completely accepted the message, what people do in their bedrooms is their own business, and its conservative corollary, since what I do in my bedroom is none of your business, I don’t feel any particular need to tell you about it, unless the subject arises in normal conversation.

Dana, at 149: so one of the things about ‘coming out’ is that you can’t talk about, say, your boyfriend in the way that straight boys talk about their girlfriends … because doing so instantly makes an issue of sexuality and there’s always a danger that whoever you talk to is going to have a bad reaction.

I would never walk up to someone and say “hi, i’m aphrael and i’m a homosexual” … but I say that i’m openly out because I don’t, for example, refuse to talk about my husband when it’s appropriate to do so.

This has led at least one commenter here to be confused into thinking I’m a woman.

As a conservative, I completely accepted the message, what people do in their bedrooms is their own business, and its conservative corollary, since what I do in my bedroom is none of your business, I don’t feel any particular need to tell you about it, unless the subject arises in normal conversation.

If only The Left would acknowledge that message and just STFU about the Right invading their bedrooms!
But then, they wouldn’t have that issue to be dishonest about, and they’d have to move on to some other lie.

154. gay marriage is the future it’s like google goggles and natural gas and artisanal distilleries

Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/26/2013 @ 10:47 am

Gay marriage is the future like leukemia, cancer, or heart disease.

Anyone want to take bets that some of those things aren’t in our individual futures?

Leftists are big on demanding we expand government “for the children.” The one thing they don’t want to do is preserve the one thing that is all about “for the children.” Marriage.

That’s telling.

Aphrael, with all due respect, gay marriage only becomes thinkable when a society is either afraid to or unable to articulate the purpose for marriage.

When the definition of marriage includes relationships in which procreation must take place outside of it simply because of the composition, then marriage has outlived its purpose.

This is not merely an opinion.

And by the way, doesn’t everyone besides me realize how wierd a place in history we are when we’re at a place when the courts are going to tell us what marriage is? And the rest of us are acting like they have that authority?

That right there provides all the info you need to know we’re a society in its death throes.

Mark, in 1987, the US Supreme Court overruled a Missouri regulation which prevented incarcerated prisoners from getting married without permission from the warden. The opinion was written by Justice O’Connor, and joined by Justices Rehnquist, White, Powell, and Scalia; the portion of the opinion covering the marriage regulation was joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens (making the opinion unanimous as to that part).

An excerpt:

In support of the marriage regulation, petitioners first suggest that the rule does not deprive prisoners of a constitutionally protected right. They concede that the decision to marry is a fundamental right under Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U. S. 374 (1978), and Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967), but they imply that a different rule should obtain “in . . . a prison forum.” See Brief for Petitioners 38, n. 6. Petitioners then argue that, even if the regulation burdens inmates’ constitutional rights, the restriction should be tested under a reasonableness standard. They urge that the restriction is reasonably related to legitimate security and rehabilitation concerns.

We disagree with petitioners that Zablocki does not apply to prison inmates. It is settled that a prison inmate “retains those [constitutional] rights that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system.” Pell v. Procunier, supra, at 417 U. S. 822. The right to marry, like many other rights, is subject to substantial restrictions as a result of incarceration. Many important attributes of marriage remain, however, after taking into account the limitations imposed by prison life. First, inmate marriages, like others, are expressions of emotional support and public commitment. These elements are an important and significant aspect of the marital relationship. In addition, many religions recognize marriage as having spiritual significance; for some inmates and their spouses, therefore, the commitment of marriage may be an exercise of religious faith as well as an expression of personal dedication. Third, most inmates eventually will be released by parole or commutation, and therefore most inmate marriages are formed in the expectation that they ultimately will be fully consummated. Finally, marital status often is a precondition to the receipt of government benefits (e.g., Social Security benefits), property rights (e.g., tenancy by the entirety, inheritance rights), and other, less tangible benefits (e.g., legitimation of children born out of wedlock). These incidents of marriage, like the religious and personal aspects of the marriage commitment, are unaffected by the fact of confinement or the pursuit of legitimate corrections goals.

Taken together, we conclude that these remaining elements are sufficient to form a constitutionally protected marital relationship in the prison context.

_Procreation_, or children for that matter, were not considered important to the discussion in that case.

I’m not putting forward the law as a moral authority; i’m putting forward the unanimous agreement of (reasonably old) judges thirty six years ago as evidence that the “marriage has always been about the children” claim is incorrect.

To The Republican Dana-
Over the years I have provided medical care for many people with HIV/AIDS, which meant I had more knowledge of people’s habits than the typical running into people on the street, along with various circles of friends and HIV service organizations, etc. There are many people that I probably knew more about their sexual behavior than their politics. It was an unusual circumstance.

Yes, I thought aphrael was a woman for quite a while to when I first came here since I once heard him refer to his “husband”. I had never heard that before, though I was familiar with the neutral term “partner”.

MD in Philly – as an only extremely tenuously ontopic aside, I hadn’t been aware until today of how important Dr. Koop was to the public understanding of HIV/AIDS. What i’m seeing in his obituaries suggests he was a very good man, whose loss diminishes us.

aphrael, you say that procreation is not important to the discussion of the Zablocki v. Redhail case even as you quote:

Third, most inmates eventually will be released by parole or commutation, and therefore most inmate marriages are formed in the expectation that they ultimately will be fully consummated. Finally, marital status often is a precondition to the receipt of government benefits (e.g., Social Security benefits), property rights (e.g., tenancy by the entirety, inheritance rights), and other, less tangible benefits (e.g., legitimation of children born out of wedlock).

(from aphrael’s comment)

I respectfully suggest that your own quotation contradicts your assertion.

The deal with prison is that it deprives convicts of the full rights inherent in citizenship—that should include the “right” to get married during one’s term in prison.

That’s kind of the whole point of prison—it is punishment, it is not a fun lazy Saturday at the county fair.

Well, at least it used to be perceived that way, before Marxism seduced too many people with its promise of paradise on earth, as well as its litany of excuses for why some people are “forced” by society/imperialism/capitalism/the man on the moon to commit crimes.

SPQR: (a), i’m not talking about _Zablocki_, which involved a rule prohibiting someone from marrying until they caught up on their arreared child support payments, but about _Turner v Safley_.

(b) the quotation lists as the third item whether or not the marriage would be consummated, but consummation of the marriage doesn’t imply children.

(c) while children are mentioned – legitimation of children born out of wedlock is listed – they’re listed as an “other, less tangible benefits” at the end of a list of different things which together legitimate the marriage. there’s no indication that that benefit is either necessary *or* in and of itself sufficient, and its location in the list would tend to suggest that it was relatively less important than the other items in the list.

Dr. Koop was legendary in many circles here in Philly even before he was Surgeon General. Yes, he developed a mailing on HIV/AIDS that went to every US address. At the time he probably got more heat from the conservative side of things, as he saw himself as the “Surgeon General for all Americans”.
Though I don’t know how well he would be thought of today if he sent out the same mailing. I believe he was more of the “ABC” philosophy of HIV control, emphasizing Abstinence until finding a life partner, Being faithful to one partner, and Condoms if you are not willing to do either of the first. On both the national and international levels the majority of AIDS activists have forcefully opposed this, wanting to simplify the message to “just do it with condoms”. (Even though the “ABC” message is the only one ever to be shown to be effective in the developing world).

gg– if my gaydar was all that keen, in college I prolly wouldn’t have dated, loved, and broken up with a guy who a year later married a female acquaintance of mine only to have him come out of the closet twenty years and 2 kids later explaining that he could no longer live a lie. That pretty much messed up 4 lives one of which which I fully realize could have been mine had things developed differently. That long ago near miss has definitely made this topic more interesting to me. I think it’s also caused me look at the definition of “marriage” a bit differently than I might have previously. I wonder if two people in an “honest” gay marriage might be better both for individuals and for society in the long run than being in a dishonest but ostensibly heterosexual one. I don’t know, but I do think about that.

I’m not putting forward the law as a moral authority; i’m putting forward the unanimous agreement of (reasonably old) judges thirty six years ago as evidence that the “marriage has always been about the children” claim is incorrect.

Comment by aphrael (f46ee5) — 2/26/2013 @ 11:40 am

I am inspired to respond in all seriousness, “So?”

Ok. We’ve established if you can dumb down a group of judges with an ivy league education and a career in law you can get them to say anything.

But again, I’m forced to ask, “So?”

Let’s step back and take a look at the forest instead of focusing on the trees.

Do you not think it’s strange that a group of judges believe they have the power to tell us what the definition of marriage is?

Government is not a creation of society. Society is a creation of government.

Gays think this is about their rights. It isn’t.

Sorry. I guess I’m just a H8r for noticing that eh important thing about redefining marriage as far as government is concerned is wiping out the meaning of the word before gub’mint got around to recreating it. Now that they’ve recreated it, it’s their creation.

Steve57: “Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state”

I don’t think that’s a reasonable description, really, of how any significant political group in the US views things, or of how any significant activist group behaves.

It certainly doesn’t describe _my_ perspective; I’ve been quite clear, here and elsewhere, in the aftermath of Proposition 8, that the state of California has no power to deny that I am married, and that its refusal to recognize my marriage does not cause my marriage to not exist.

—-

Your claim seems to boil down to, marriage has always been about children.

My claim is an example proof of a powerful body, consisting of people who are two or three generations older than I am, saying that marriage is about things other than children.

Do they get to define ‘marriage’ for everyone? No. (They had the power to define what marriage means to the state, but that didn’t give them the power to control what people believe marriage to be). But they are an example of people who disagreed with your assertion.

Other examples can be found throughout history. Many marriages among powerful medieval Europeans were all about property consolidation. Many historically attested marriages in Roman times were about economic and political alliances between families. Romantic and mystic philosophers have for centuries extolled the primary virtue of marriage as being about love.

I think the most people can say is that some marriages have been about children; others have been about money; others have been about love. There are many reasons why people get married, and many reasons why people value marriage, and there doesn’t seem to have ever in recorded history been one true basis that everyone agreed on.

—-

An obvious counter to this is that, regardless of why people chose to get married and why they value marriage, the state’s recognition of marriage is entirely about children.

But if that’s the argument, then my point about the Supreme Court is stronger – because absent legislative language defining the term, courts clearly have the power to interpret the meaning of the term for purposes of analyzing law. And the most authoritative court in the land disagreed, in 1987, that the purpose of state recognition of marriage was protecting children.

Aphrael, marriage hasn’t been the foundation that society has been built upon because everyone gets to define it for themselves.

Marriage is the foundational institution because it is how society reproduces itself.

The SCOTUS in the past didn’t arrogate to itself the power to intrude into the arena of marriage because it was precisely that important. You can read the judgements yourself. Is it too much to ask that you should reflect on why that is?

I’m simply pointing out a fact. I know you don’t like it, but I’m not going out of my way to insult you, aphrael. I don’t dislike you. We might actually get along over a couple of beers at a BBQ (unless you’re a vegan; I don’t bear a grudge against gays but I do against vegans who’ll refuse to eat the shish kabobs I went to the trouble of cooking just for them simply because they were prepared on the same grill that meat was cooked on).

Gay marriage only becomes thinkable when society becomes convinced marriage serves no purpose. It’s like a T-shirt your big brother outgrew. Marriage? Yeah, it doesn’t fit me any more so you might as well have it.

I’m not taking this as you going out of your way to insult you; beers over a BBQ could be a fun experience (I’m not vegan, and even if I were … if you were kind enough to cook me vegetable shishkabobs, it would be *rude* to turn them down just because of something else you cooked on them. wtf?); I’d probably laugh at that question and then look for some analogous thing that struck me as being perfectly obvious that everyone should like but which you happened to not. I think we’re too afraid to share these differences with each other and laugh at them.

That said …

Everyone *always has* defined marriage for themselves. Each married couple develops their own definition of what marriage is and how it works for them. Different people want different things out of marriages, different people use their marriages for different purposes. Twas ever so, and ever will it be.

> The SCOTUS in the past didn’t arrogate to itself the power to intrude into the arena of marriage because it was precisely that important. You can read the judgements yourself. Is it too much to ask that you should reflect on why that is?

I have read basically every Supreme Court decision from the latter half of the twentieth century which remotely touches on this subject. And they’ve been pretty consistent since the 1960s: marriage is a fundamental *personal* right, which government can only limit with great cause.

Let me turn the question back to you for a minute: if the courts aren’t allowed to define the meaning of *any* term for legal purposes, who is allowed to define it? And what should happen when the institution which has the power to codify a definition declines to do so?

> It’s like a T-shirt your big brother outgrew. Marriage? Yeah, it doesn’t fit me any more so you might as well have it.

That’s the part of your argument I just don’t get.

My straight friends (almost all of whom support gay marriage – I’d say *all of whom* but there are people i’ve met online whom I consider friends who do not, while every friend I have developed not-online does support gay marriage) still get married; they still see marriage as being an important and vital institution that they want to help shape their lives. So … where’s the conviction that marriage has no purpose and therefore it can be handed to gay people like a disused hand-me-down? I can’t discern it from the words or behavior of my married or want-to-be-married straight gay-marriage-supporting friends.

Is there no room in The Post for those who support the male-female, procreative model of marriage?

One of the reporter’s many blind spots was not delving into this issue more. If one thinks that the only reason government sticks its nose into marriage is because of the potential for procreation, then the anti-SSM position makes more sense. (That does not mean that it is correct, only that it is not born out of animus, prejudice, or irrational hatred.)

Most of the battle over same sex marriage, IMHO, is a battle over why government would be involved with people’s sex lives anyway. Those who think that marriage is about love are almost uniformly pro-SSM, and also want to abolish government-sanctioned marriage. However, if you think that society has an interest in ensuring the best upbringing for children, and that upbringing is in the home of the married, biological parents (barring extreme circumstances, such as abuse), and that society expresses such an interest through governmental sanction of marriage, then SSM starts to look frivolous, at best.

(Incidentally, I’ve often been called a bigoted hater for merely pointing out that there are two different justifications for marriage, only one of which explains why the government is involved at all. But that is liberal tolerance, is it not?)

“My claim is an example proof of a powerful body, consisting of people who are two or three generations older than I am, saying that marriage is about things other than children.”

aphrael – In the example you cited, was the SC asked to review the rights of gay prisoners to get married while incarcerated or only hetero prisoners? If they were only reviewing the rights of hetero prisoners to get married to a member of the opposite sex and viewed consummation as something that would not occur until after the prisoner’s release as the opinion excerpt indicates, why would you believe the opinion represents a broad definition of the attributes of marriage?

I’m not vegan, and even if I were … if you were kind enough to cook me vegetable shishkabobs, it would be *rude* to turn them down just because of something else you cooked on them. wtf?

Aphrael, that actually happened. I had to walk away so I didn’t say anything to ruin the festivities. I turned over the tongs and the fork to a friend and said I had to go into the house for a minute. I knew they were vegans and I prepared their shish kabobs ahead of time and put them in their own tupperware container. I thought I was being considerate. They told me different.

Anyways, what’s the illegitimacy rate? Tell me what you think the chances of gay marriage would have been when less than 5 percent of kids were born outside of wedlock?

I realize that I’m telling you something different than your friends are telling you. But I am gently suggesting you look at what people do, not what they say. Then after you look at how necessary people think marriage is, draw your conclusions about how important they think it is.

Daleyrocks, that’s a good question. The simple explanation is that the court *itself* says that it is describing a broad definition of the attributes of marriage.

Missouri had a policy under which inmates were allowed to marry only with the prison superintendent’s permission, which could be granted only if there were compelling reasons to grant it. According to the syllabus, trial testimony indicated that the only things which ever qualified as ‘compelling reasons’ were pregnancy and the birth of an illegitimate child.

Missouri agreed that the decision to marry is a fundamental right under the Constitution, but wanted a different rule to apply in prisons, and argued that a restriction of a fundamental right under those circumstances should be upheld as long as it was *reasonable*.

The suit was a class-action. It’s not clear what the gender of the prisoners was. I presume that they were all looking for straight marriages, but the deciding opinion is utterly silent on the subject.

At the outset of section IIIB, discussing the portion of the suit regarding marriages (there were other issues in the class action), Justice O’Connor described “important attributes of marriage” which were “sufficient to form a constitutionally protected marital relationship in the prison context.”

It’s pretty clear from that framing that the court is saying that the attributes listed *together* are sufficient to give rise to a constitutional right to marry, which can’t be denied to prisoners.

The attributes listed, in order, were:

* expressions of emotional support and public commitment
* spiritual significance
* consummation after parole or commutation
* receipt of government benefits, property rights, and less tangible benefits

———-

My point in my conversation with steve on this subject is that, if the court is saying that these together are sufficient to create an *individual, personal right* to marriage, then the court is saying something entirely inconsistent with the premise that government involvement in marriage is motivated by encouraging procreation or protecting children. Children aren’t even on the list, except as an *example* of multiple less tangible benefits which *together* are the last item on the list.

Does that _per se_ mean that governments must recognize gay marriage? No, and i’m not making that argument here. But it does pretty clearly indicate that that court didn’t believe marriage was primarily about procreation.

Steve57: that’s awful. You were being considerate by preparing seperate, special food for them. They were being rude.

———-

The thing is, I *am* looking at the behavior of my friends. My friends *get married*. They build lives together. They have children with their partners. I’m not sure what more I could do to look at how they behave rather than their words.

Steve57: Asking if someone is vegan before having them over for a meal is perfectly normal behavior. I ask anyone I am cooking for about their dietary preferences, because that’s just polite – how can I even *try* to accomodate them if I don’t know about them?

Similarly, I’d never ask anyone who was coming over for dinner about their sexual orientation, just because they were coming over for dinner. And yet at the same time, anyone who i’m friends with enough to have over, I know something about their romantic life just from other conversations in other contexts. (This doesn’t necessarily hold for people my husband has invited over; we each have our own friends and sometimes his friends are people I know minimal things about, but trust that if he likes them they must be good people).

199. The thing is, I *am* looking at the behavior of my friends. My friends *get married*. They build lives together. They have children with their partners. I’m not sure what more I could do to look at how they behave rather than their words.

Comment by aphrael (f46ee5) — 2/26/2013 @ 2:18 pm

So then what is so intolerable about the current situation?

Even in Texas the harshest push back you’re likely to encounter is an admonishment not to do it in the streets and scare the horses. But then, an overly affectionate heterosexual couple is like to receive shouts of “get a room!” so I wouldn’t see that as discriminatory or homophobic.

“But it does pretty clearly indicate that that court didn’t believe marriage was primarily about procreation.”

aphrael – My point is that it may be a little tough to procreate if one party to the marriage is in prison and conjugal visits are not allowed. I’m just wondering if opinion is as definitionally broad as you believe due to the limited circumstances being considered.

Steve57, here in NYC, one of the gayest cities in America (way gayer than SF), the largest city in a state which has legal gay marriage, a gay black couple was beaten up on the subway *just last week* because some people took exception to the fact that they were a bunch of “faggots” holding hands in public (the assaulting crowd’s words).

daley–In direct contrast to your concern and worry about riding with vegans in cars, I brought up living la vida low carb where people mostly aren’t gassy. I was not speaking of vegans then. See 198 which you copied in 204. Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re full of beans–it’s probably just snow stress getting to you. :}

Of course, the thing that I missed in that last flippant response to you is that you were asking me what’s wrong with the current *legal* situation.

I am perfectly happy with a world in which some states recognize gay marriage and others do not, _with the caveat_ that I think the federal government should follow its pre-DOMA practice of recognizing any marriage which was valid in the state where the couple is domiciled. I voted against Proposition 8 and was bitterly angry when it passed, but I would have sought to overturn it via another initiative, not via a lawsuit.

That said, I’m sympathetic to both of the court cases.

In the DOMA case, the federal government is saying to Edith Wharton that it is going to treat her marriage (recognized by the state of New York) differently from my childless-by-choice straight friends’ marriages.

What Wharton’s attorneys are saying is basically: *if* you’re going to do that, the classification you use to treat it differently must be closely related to a substantial state interest (basically the same test used to see if gender-based classifications are constitutional). I think that’s an accurate statement of general constitutional equal protection principles, and I don’t think the federal government can meet the burden.

All of the *legal* arguments on the other side strike me as being one of the following:

* a claim that the reason marriage exists _as a legal matter_ is to protect children, which can only really be maintained if you ignore the reasoning in cases like Turner and Zablocki;
* a claim that when the state treats people differently because of their sexual orientation, it need only have a rational basis to do so, because the 14th amendment was never intended to apply to gay people (which ignores the ways that other classifications not envisioned by the authors of fourteenth amendment have become suspect classifications and thereby carves sexual orientation out as the *unique exception* which can’t be covered by the fourteenth amendment even when things like bastardy can be);
* a claim that somehow the legal-purposes definition of the word ‘marriage’ is immune to court interpretation (which ignores the fact that courts have repeatedly interpreted it and the fact that the entire job of the courts is to interpret legislative language).

Personally, i’m substantially more irritated by the Wharton/DOMA case than the Prop 8 case because the federal government is saying it’s going to treat some NY-legal marriages differently than other NY-legal marriages, and it should have a good reason for doing so.

The prop 8 case I have a much harder time with. This is California, so the only difference between a domestic partnership and a marriage under the state constitution is the *name* and the *form you fill out*. Other than the name, gay couples have all the rights and privileges and responsibilities of married couples.

So there the question is: given that CA is discriminating between straight and gay couples by calling their relationships different things, is there a sufficient justification for *that* distinction?

And I think that’s a harder question. If you believe the label is per se meaningful, then I think you’re back in the what’s your close relation to a substantial state interest. If you think the label is meaningful, I have a hard time not just laughing the whole thing off as an irrelevant diversion.

207. Steve57, here in NYC, one of the gayest cities in America (way gayer than SF), the largest city in a state which has legal gay marriage, a gay black couple was beaten up on the subway *just last week* because some people took exception to the fact that they were a bunch of “faggots” holding hands in public (the assaulting crowd’s words).

I think that’s intolerable.

Comment by aphrael (f46ee5) — 2/26/2013 @ 2:40 pm

Most people think it’s intolerable, aphrael. That’s why we have laws against it.

What more would you have me do? Do you think the one thing that keeps criminals who assault gays going is the fact I haven’t been compelled by leviathan to praise your relationship as a marriage? That if only I could be forced to do that, all would be well?

Excuse me. I have to go and castrate myself because my next door neighbor is behind on child support.

a vegetarian named Mr. Bernie Goetz was assaulted on a subway once
A jury found him not guilty of all charges except an illegal firearms possession count, for which he served two-thirds of a one-year sentence.

The world will be safer from the Chris Dorners of the world if I’m disarmed. There will be less dead-beat daddery if I have to have my wedding tackle chopped off. Gays will be able to proudly walk the streets of New York if Texans like me are forced to sing the praises of Same Sex Marriage.

Steve, at 223: i’m not sure where you’re going with that, since i’ve already said that i’m perfectly content with SSM recognized in some states and not in others, as long as the feds recognize as valid any marriage which is valid in the state of the couple’s domicile.

So we’re having an argument, in essence, between people from my social milieu and people from your social milieu about whether the state should treat them as different things, and both groups think the answer is blindingly obvious.

—-

That said, I think it’s difficult to conclude that they’re different things *under California law*, since California law explicitly holds that the *only* difference is the name.

So we’re having an argument, in essence, between people from my social milieu and people from your social milieu about whether the state should treat them as different things, and both groups think the answer is blindingly obvious.

Brasfield, 40, and his girlfriend, Shaquina Baxter, were in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard when he released the shiny red and silver mylar balloons and watched them float away Sunday morning.

Also watching the romantic gesture: an FHP trooper, who instead noted probable cause for an environmental crime.

…Between 2008 and 2012, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said there were 21 arrests statewide under the rarely used environmental crime statute. The third-degree felony is punishable by up to five years in prison.

This is the kind of depth you’ve got to sink a society to where all of a sudden it occurs to you, why not same sex marriage?

Daleyrocks – my “flippant remark” remark was directed at steve57, who had asked me how things were intolerable and got a flippant remark about subway beatings rather than a legal argument.

My response to you was to note that since the decision explicitly says “hey, these are the attributes of marriage” and then says “these attributes apply to prisoners too”, it’s really hard to buy the argument that the court wasn’t saying “these are the attributes of marriage.”

I’m tempted to point out that it was a whole dozen balloons, much more destructive than a mere one or two.

I’m also tempted to say that the officer should stake-out churches on Sat afternoon and arrest a whole mess of people for throwing rice.

But I won’t.
There is a book titled The Revenge of Conscience that I believe argues the thesis that if you repress your conscience over something important it will spill out sideways over something else.
I think Lynyrd Skynyrd mentioned it in Sweet Home Alabama.

I think the name is very important, as these things go. If the legally binding definition of marriage becomes 2 people of any sex combination and us lifeydoodles say you two can do whatever you want I don’t think it is the same as a marriage between two heterosexuals I will be accused of being a bully.

And everyone knows that being a bully is worse than releasing helium balloons, so I might get arrested in Florida

“it’s really hard to buy the argument that the court wasn’t saying “these are the attributes of marriage.”

alpharael – Sure, especially when they note that some of the attributes won’t even be possible with the two parties as currently situated which gives me so much more comfort with respect the applicability of the precedent.

248. I think the name is very important, as these things go. If the legally binding definition of marriage becomes 2 people of any sex combination and us lifeydoodles say you two can do whatever you want I don’t think it is the same as a marriage between two heterosexuals I will be accused of being a bully.

And everyone knows that being a bully is worse than releasing helium balloons, so I might get arrested in Florida

Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/26/2013 @ 4:28 pm

What you’ve got to understand is the problem is caused by the mere fact we lifeydoodles exist.

It don’t matter that El Paso is the safest city in Uhh-mer-kkku. They sell guns in El Paso. So Chicago is a hell hole.

so one of the things about ‘coming out’ is that you can’t talk about, say, your boyfriend in the way that straight boys talk about their girlfriends … because doing so instantly makes an issue of sexuality and there’s always a danger that whoever you talk to is going to have a bad reaction.

Back when I was in grad school, I worked at the University Hospital as award clerk. Across the hall was the pharmacy tech’s room. The tech never formally came out and told us he was gay — this was the early 80s — but when he would talk about his personal life, he’d refer to his “roommate.” He actually thought he was being clever and that nobody knew, but everybody knew, and as far as I could tel, nobody really cared.

His sexuality became apparent to us not because of any great announcement, but through the normal course of life and work. It was as much our business as it would be for any set of work friends: known, but neither an issue nor a problem. (Randy never chose to go to any after-work parties or get-togethers or anything like that.)

That, to me, seems like a natural way for people to find out these things; it just happens over the course of personal interaction. The notion that someone has to make a Big Announcement is what I find strange.

I think the most people can say is that some marriages have been about children; others have been about money; others have been about love. There are many reasons why people get married, and many reasons why people value marriage, and there doesn’t seem to have ever in recorded history been one true basis that everyone agreed on.

Some students may feel uncomfortable with a transgender student using the same sex-segregated restroom, locker room or changing facility. This discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student. School administrators and counseling staff should work with students to address the discomfort and to foster understanding of gender identity, to create a school culture that respects and values all students…

At one school, a transgender girl joined the girls’ cheerleading squad. The school supported the student’s participation on the team. When the team was going to a regional competition, however, several of the team members raised a concern that the school would be made to compete in the coed cheerleading portion of the competition rather than in the all-girls portion for which they prepared.
With the permission of the student, the principal wrote a letter that she gave to the coach to take to the competition in case officials at the competition questioned the team’s participation in the all-girls’ portion of the event. The letter explained: “Student, Jane Smith, is a transgender girl who has been a member of the girls’ team since (date). Jane has a sincerely held female gender identity and, therefore, according to state law must be permitted to participate as a girl on the girls’ cheerleading team.” The team participated in the regional competition without incident.

I am 100% for children to not be bullied or ostracized for any reason,
but who in the world thinks making a bunch of teen age girls or boys share a locker room with a person who clearly is physically the other sex is going to help the situation?

It seems that a transgender boy (biologically female) who wants to be a diver on the boys swimming team and not wear a top would be fine, and if people snicker they are the ones in trouble.

I think the most people can say is that some marriages have been about children; others have been about money; others have been about love. There are many reasons why people get married, and many reasons why people value marriage, and there doesn’t seem to have ever in recorded history been one true basis that everyone agreed on.

I believe that you have veered off into the weeds with this one. Every human society of which we are aware has had some form of marriage because it was necessary for the rearing of children. Every one of those societies had cultural, if not necessarily legal, restrictions on sex, because the society could not reasonably expect to survive if children could not be cared for and brought to adulthood, and this required that assignment, and acceptance of that assignment, or paternity. We may have made a modern disconnect, because artificial contraception is now available, but that doesn’t seem to have worked out all that well for us. We thought that we were so much wiser than our ancestors, but it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way.

I don’t bear a grudge against gays but I do against vegans who’ll refuse to eat the shish kabobs I went to the trouble of cooking just for them simply because they were prepared on the same grill that meat was cooked on

In Massachusetts there is a heterosexual married couple. One of the two decides they are really bi or homosexual. The partner who still thinks/feels they are 100% heterosexual doesn’t like the situation and wants a divorce. Add to the situation a large income disparity and minor children. The partner who made the revelation says, “Oh no you don’t, you can’t discriminate against me in a legal contract because of my sexual orientation, we’re not getting a divorce…

That seems to be a real possibility in some states right now. A future possibility-
state X becomes the first state to sanction polygamy, and there are anti-discrimination laws. John Smith says, “You know, I never really was satisfied with one woman; I think I’ll get me another wife. No, I am not divorcing the first, and she isn’t going to divorce me.”

We thought that we were so much wiser than our ancestors, but it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way.Comment by The historian Dana (af9ec3) — 2/26/2013 @ 5:09 pm

Thinking they were wise, they became fools.

Telling a bunch of teenagers of one sex they have to feel comfortable letting a person biologically of the other sex use the same bathroom? And thinking that will prevent bullying? How much more foolish can one get?

I have great concern and sympathy for a child in such a situation, but making some 14 yo an object lesson for the sake of the PC crowd is heinous.

However, I do hope that you won’t be terribly offended if I don’t eat anything smothered with cheese. I know the kabobs won’t be.
Comment by The Dana who realizes that cheese is really just rotten, sour, clabbered milk (af9ec3) — 2/26/2013 @ 5:14 pm

When I was very young I loved cottage cheese. then I went on a school field trip and saw how it was made…it probably took me 39 years before I could enjoy it again.
If I could only remember the details, there must be an emotional damage action in there somewhere.

When I was very young I loved cottage cheese. then I went on a school field trip and saw how it was made…it probably took me 39 years before I could enjoy it again.
If I could only remember the details, there must be an emotional damage action in there somewhere.

Oh, it’s simple! You leave a gallon jug of milk on the kitchen counter, in July, for three weeks. Then, after it’s all clabbered and you have white layers and watery layers, you stir it twice, and you have cottage cheese.

Or you could pour off the water, stir it twice, and you have ricotta cheese.

Or you could pour off the water, shoot it with a shotgun, and you have Swiss cheese.

Or you could pour off the water, let it sit on the kitchen counter for another three weeks, and you have bleu cheese.

Telling a bunch of teenagers of one sex they have to feel comfortable letting a person biologically of the other sex use the same bathroom? And thinking that will prevent bullying? How much more foolish can one get?

Let me write this. If, when I went to high school, a boy asserted that he felt like a girl and insisted on using the girls’ locker room, he would be a target of harassment and abuse, and I would not have spoken out against them.

Comment by The Dana who realizes that cheese is really just rotten, sour, clabbered milk

It’s actually digested milk, broken down by the lactase enzyme found in a gland in the stomachs of unweaned mammals (lambs and goats in my experience). At butchering, the gland is saved and dried and small pieces are shaved off into the milk at cheesemaking time. That’s universal. Different cheeses are made by different degrees of pasteurization of the milk (up to and including boiling), butterfat content, salting, and introduction to your favorite molds, bacteria and pollen, during curing.

Now I don’t need to remember the details of that episode back in the 60’s, I’ve got emotional trauma right here and now, with witnesses!!

But back to seriousness, anybody want to try to defend the MA law?
As it is, normal teenage boys worry about whether their hormones are making their breasts grow before the testosterone kicks in, how big the “leg in the middle” is, whether there is hair…and I remember overhearing an interesting conversation in jr high when a girl was offering to tell a guy which girls had only padding under their bras or something more…

And people think making all of these folks alter their mindset to accommodate one or two transgendered kids in a grade is going to work out well?

Heck, a girl had to change her school here in Philly when she was verbally abused by a teacher for wearing a Romney T-shirt (“This is a Democrat school”).

“For certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to take rank as one of the coordinate states of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement. ”

Are you suggesting that being politically leftist leads to a greater chance of being homosexual, or that being homosexual leads to a greater probability of being liberal?
Comment by The heterosexist pig Dana (3e4784)

Dana, it’s sort of chicken or egg.

Researchers have correlated left-handedness, the direction of a person’s hair swirl, the size of an area in the brain, the size of other things (which shall go unmentioned) — and other observers have made jokes about the presence of Broadway show tunes — as a manifestation of at least male homosexuality. But scientists have never scrutinized the large percentage of gays (or GLBT in general) who tend to be leftwing. That’s in spite of that being perhaps a greater, stronger connection with homosexual behavior than possibly any other trait commonly linked to the GLBT crowd.

And, yea, there are gay centrists, and there are gay conservatives. But, again, we’re talking about the percentages of those sub-groups against the overall group.

Mark: I have a fair amount of experience with self-described gay people; my experience says that *none* of them are sexually attracted to women and that while they have female friends, having sex with them is universally unappealing.
Comment by aphrael (f46ee5) — 2/26/2013 @ 8:34 am

Aphrael, isn’t it ironic, therefore, that one of the FEW actors in the entertainment industry, who calls himself gay, admits to also having apparently legitimate socio-sexual relationships with women. And I won’t point out the recent comments made by music producer Clive Davis, who outsiders may have originally assumed was staunchly, totally, 100% gay.

There’s a famous blond-bombshell actress (who, btw, is leftwing based on certain comments of hers that I’ve come across) who went out on a date with the poster boy of AIDS (ie, Rock Hudson) decades ago. She said when they returned home, he and her had a good ol’ time making out (ie, having sex), and she said he was pretty damn good.

The left frequently downplays the importance of free will and the power of good or poor choices when it comes to so many areas—from economics to culture, from policymaking to politicians. So why should their take on human sexuality be any different?

That’s why many journalists have a hard time giving much voice to those opposed to gay marriage. They see people opposed to gay rights today as cousins, perhaps distant cousins, of people in the 1950s and 1960s who, citing God and the Bible, opposed black people sitting in the bus seat, or dining at the lunch counter, of their choosing.

There is a MASSIVE difference between citing biblical ambiguities to justify racial arguments and the rather explicit and undeniable prohibitions in the bible of ALL forms of sodomy, but particularly homosexuality:Leviticus 18:22 – “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”

This is hardly the sole example of it.

So that’s not at debate. And if one does take the Bible even VAGUELY seriously, and one pretty much HAS to if one is to be religious, then there’s not really any wiggle room here.

So this matter is NOT a matter of the rights of gays alone. It is the rights of gays in contention with the religious rights of Christians.

In our society, under the social contract we call the Constitution, NEITHER should be taken as absolutely above the other. They need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis to balance the rights of the gays against the rights of the Christians.

Clearly, the historical manner of persecuting gays is unacceptable. But this does not mean that it is needful to go whole hog the other extreme and force every member of society to act as though being gay is utterly acceptable, either.

A recent example is the case of a woman in Hawaii who runs a bed and breakfast — this is not some semi-public place, it was her own HOME, which she chose to rent out to people. When a lesbian couple attempted to rent a room together there, she politely declined. Given that there are no doubt a vast array of alternative locations to stay at in Hawaii, which would have no issues with her being gay, they still chose to sue this woman for standing by her religious beliefs. Sorry, their right to be gay does not triumph her right to allow people of her choosing into her HOME, based on overt and inarguable religious scripture that states what they are doing to be wrong. If this were a motel or hotel, THEN their argument might have standing. But not in her own home, even if she’s renting it out to people. Their rights stopped triumphing her religious rights at the property line.

The right of churches to choose to not allow gay couples to marry on their premises is a similar case. But the Post would certainly raise issues in favor of the gay couple which attempted to force a church to treat their desire to be married the same as any other couple.

The rights of people to their religious beliefs are just as valid as anyone’s right to a sexual proclivity. More so.

The true conservative would want the government out of people’s bedrooms, and religion out of government.

Gee, thanks for telling conservatives what they want, you being an expert on what’s conservative and all that. No, wait, journalists are almost uniformly NOT conservative and have exceptionally little understanding of what conservatives ARE all about as a result of that.

That discussion is most revealing about journalists.

Indeed it is, it’s amazingly revealing about the ignorance and arrogance of the profession.

Journalists, along with teachers, consistently vote in the 90% range for NON-conservative principles in government and non-conservative politicians, It is, in fact, one of the two LEAST politically “diverse” professions.

If both professions were not made up of almost completely two-faced hypocrites, both journalists and teachers would find themselves making a serious effort to promote and encourage more conservatives to join their ranks, in the interests of getting a wider, more accurately representative body of people — a true spectrum of the populace properly representing the “diversity” of thought and culture and idea which they claim to be so obviously in support of.

Yet NEITHER of you do nothing of the sort. Not even a smidgen of effort in that regard.

So pardon me if I categorically reject YOU telling ANYONE what “conservatives should want”.

Moreover —

a) first, I strongly suggest you learn the difference between LIBERTARIANS and CONSERVATIVES, who have some substantial overlap but are hardly synonymous. You appear to confuse the two rather egregiously badly.

b) secondly, you need to figure out something “subtle”… “nuanced”, even: This is not about The State venturing into the bedroom — it’s about people bringing what happens in the bedroom out into the public eye.

Gays aren’t keeping their sexual proclivities “in the bedrooms”, they’re making them quite openly public. And that is what this subject is really all about — the extent to which the public needs to kowtow to their beliefs regarding their sexual activities.

And because our profession lives and dies on the First Amendment — one of the libertarian cornerstones of the Constitution — most journalists have a problem with religionists telling people what they can and cannot do. We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies pretty much when, where and how we choose.

Ah, so you advocate open, public sex in any forum…? A courtroom, say, or the main lobby of the Washington Post? Hey, I want to have hot raunchy sex with my GF on the WAPO Chief Editor’s desk. I’ll be by later on this week. Be sure to let the editor know he’s got nothing to say about that, that by your own stated company principles, I should not be refused entry.
What? No, that’s not what you meant? Of course not, so your assertion is a ludicrously stupid and idiotic claim on the face of it. Clearly, you want nothing of the sort… you just want to do it in places where RELIGIOUS people object to it, just so you can rub their noses in it.
Yeah, that’s ALL about “fairness”. Ah-huh.

Most journalists believe that through writing about life as it is, showing people’s struggles and contradictions, we get closer to the truth.

Oh, yeah, pull the other one. As though you give a damned about the attitudes and beliefs of anyone whose attitudes and beliefs you don’t agree with yourselves. You know, as well as I do, that you jackasses as a professional group rejected objectivity as an ethical principle more than a decade and a half ago — you don’t give a damned about anyone’s POV but those you agree with, and the fact that you’re not even close to a significant majority of the populace is irrelevant to that. The actions of the media in numerous cases shows a marked disregard for the truth. You make bald-faced assertions which are clearly lies, you put forth claims which even a brief effort to familiarize yourselves with the facts would show to be false, and, even if someone contacts you and clearly, indisputably proves them false, you will happily repeat those blatantly false claims the next time its needed to promote an agenda you believe in.
You don’t give a rodent’s patootie about the Truth — or Justice — and you never have.

IGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States and some Canadian provinces (98ae1f) —
2/26/2013 @ 11:59 pm

284. Let me write this. If, when I went to high school, a boy asserted that he felt like a girl and insisted on using the girls’ locker room, he would be a target of harassment and abuse, and I would not have spoken out against them.

Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/26/2013 @ 6:53 pm

First of all, we took a vote. We decided we’d let you write that.

Second, when I was 13 I wouldn’t have much cared what kind of harassment you would have thought yourself capable of meting out if I could have gotten myself assigned to the the girl’s locker room.

When all this shakes out all the horny teen-aged boys will be in the girls’ locker room, the girls will have figured out safe haven lies in the boys locker room, and the public employee union members of the NEA will be mining this bottomless pit for all its worth.

This “process” we’ve embarked upon courtesy of the Mass. Dept. of Ed. will require supervision and guidance, doncha know?

Leviticus 18:22 – “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”

Beyond the Bible, it’s fascinating that the famous ancient Greek philosopher Plato originally said that opposition to homosexuality was, to paraphrase, something that only Neanderthals (or Plato’s sniping was analogous to people like Obama talking about gun-toting religious folks in the suburbs, or Red America) felt or did. IOW, he sounded exactly like a modern-day liberal. But towards the later half of his life, he changed his tone (for whatever reason) and found homosexuality to be disreputable.

As much as things change, some things never change.

Personally, I find non-religious reasons for rejecting “GLBT” as more telling, widespread or compelling than anything related to a specific religion (the story of Sodom and Lot notwithstanding).

they still chose to sue this woman for standing by her religious beliefs.

They undoubtedly pray at the altar of liberalism, and so their pushy, obstinate politics are as crucial and motivating to them as their homosexuality.

Again, what comes first: Leftist sentiment or other aspects of human behavior, or visa versa?

During the campaign to ratify the 14th Amendment, there was no indication that any of the framers understood the amendment to even possibly create a right to polygamy.

The idea that the framers did not understand the 14th to create a right to polygamy is further buttressed by a series of Supreme Court rulings that rejected constitutional challenges to anti-polygamy laws. all of those rulings were unanimous, and all affirmed lower court rulings rejecting such challenges.

The same is true for same-sex “marriage”. There is not a single writing from the framers indicating that they believed that the amendment might require legal recognition of same-sex “marriage”.

Further buttressing this point is the rejection of a constitutional amendment that might have created a right to same-sex “marriage”. The year Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810, 93 S. Ct. 37, 34 L.E.2d 65 (1972) was decided, the U.S. began a ten-year debate over the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. There was considerable debate over whether it would create a right to “marry” someone of the same sex, thus requiring a result opposite of Baker. Compare The Legality of Homosexual Marriage, 82 YALE L.J. 573 (1973) and testimony of Harvard Professor
Paul A. Freund in Hearings on H.J. Res. 35, 208 Before Subcomm. No. 4 of the House Comm. on the Judiciary, 92d Cong., 1st Sess. (1971) (arguing that ERA would create such a right) with e.g.,
118 Cong. Rec. 4389 (daily ed. March 21, 1972) (Sen. Bayh) (arguing it would not)

Furthermore, there are different experiences with state-level ERA’s. While both ERA’s and same-sex “marriages” exist in Washington and Massachusetts, in the former, SSM is merely a statutory privilege subject to subsequent repeal by legislative action, while in the latter it is a constitutional right that can only be repealed by the state’s amendment process. This difference arises from different interpretation of analogous constitutional provisions.

When the ERA was rejected, the U.S. implicitly rejected this ambiguity. It is preposterous to argue that the 14th amendment should be interpreted to create a right to SSM when a stricter amendment that could be interpreted to create such a right was rejected after the Supreme Court decided Baker.

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